Made by hand

I'm in Tokyo just a few days of returning home.
I've been traveling for quite some time now, and I had a blast. But I'm looking forward to go back and restart working in teh car in a week or so. I'm missing my car!!

Meanwhile a good friend of mine sent me youtube links about the assembly of the 356 in the 60's!! It's shows me a bit of what I'm expected to do... Here are the links:

Made by hand - Part 1/5:


Made by hand - Part 2/5:


Made by hand - Part 3/5:


Made by hand - Part 4/5:


Made by hand - Part 5/5:

Documentation

While disassembling the car I've been discovering that some things simply do not match, e.g. any screws are different (same part taking different tools to remove it). So I decide to finally get technical documentation about the car. Although I already some Porsche books, I decided to buy the Porsche Service Manual and Parts Catalog. Although the quality of the pictures is a bit low, these books are amazing detailling every little piece to the level of the individual screw.
Although I've tried to take pictures of the disassembling process, and after removing the part partly assemble it with all moving parts, I'm sure these manuals will be handy when starting to put things together again.

Here's a picture of what it looks a couple of kilos of Porsche technical documentation.



I'll be traveling for the next 6 weeks. More updates after October 20!

Half-way through... the first step

I'm haf-way through the first step of the restoration, which is removing all the parts of the car. I've started with the interiors, and at this moment all glass, all wires, all tapestry have been removed. From the outside all moving parts were also removed, like doors, hoods, etc.
I have now accomplished the first part, the second part which will probably take me as long as the first, is removing the engine and all the mechanical components. But that will be for another post :)
Here's a photo of the current state:



The more I work in the car the more I find evidence of past lack of care with the car. As soon as the car is all into pieces, I'll make a list of top broken things I was not expecting!

Difficulties #1

So far I'm felling lucky because I didn't find many troubles disassembling the car. Just a few broken screws, some screws heads smashed but nothing really serious and nothing that I could not handle (with some help).
However, that was a specific part that gave some struggle: the rear seat cover.
While most of interiors can be disassembled from the interior of the car itself (they're either fixed with glue or screws) this little piece literally revealed a bit of my rage, and make me force it to come out. Nothing was really lost as these parts need to be complete redone...
The problem is that this part has pressure rings in the engine compartment (that also holds thermic and sound isolation) and after removing that there are still more screws!!! I wonder if there couldn't be a hardest way to do this...

Pressure rings (which are actually squares)

Screws holing the interior rear seat cover

Cataloguing

One of the tasks that scares me the most is to assembly everything back. Who wasn't the kid that tried to disassemble their toys and when putting everything together again there were loose parts? screws or parts that didn't fit anywhere (and one could swear that that part was never removed) but somehow things would more or less work again. Well... It happened to me many times when I was kid.
Well, a car is not simply a toy, so I've tried to do it with much more care. One of the things that I've tried to keep is a photography record of the things that I'm doing, and again using pictures to catalog things. I hope this helps me to remember how to put things back again.

Here are some more pictures for the catalog.

Seats:



Right Door:



Carpets:

Dreaming

And while I finish my thesis and start to day dream with the day the car will be ready. I know, it's still to early and that will take a lot of time... but I couldn't resist going to youtube :)
Here's how I hope mine will look someday!

A Journey of a 1000 miles...

So here I mark the beginning of this journey of restoration. I don't know how many miles it will take me (1000 maybe more, mybe less, but I'm sure it will require me to travel a lot fishing for parts, and materials to use). I don't know how long it will take me either, and that is for sure the most scary thing. But whatever distance it takes, how much time it takes, as any other journey it starts with a single step! This is the step where you begin.
So this is the official beginning of the restoration.
After a couple of days working, I've removed most the interiors: seats, carpets and side panels; lateral windows; bumpers; all exterior lights; and external bumpers.

Exterior view


Interior view

Introduction

Before start, allow me to do the introductions.
"Ruiva" is a Porsche 356C Karmann Coupé that left the beautiful location of Stuttgart, Germany on July 6, 1964. It was initially registered in Portland, Oregon USA in 1965. Very little is know about her history, only that the last 10 years was in storage (probably due to mechanical - engine - problems).

Ruiva returned to Europe, Rotterdam in 2009 and was acquired by me in 2010.
In January 2011, small reparations were done such that it could be registered and road legal.
Here are some photos after her first bath.

First post

Here is the first post about this blog. So I'm starting with what this blog is all about.
From the name some might think that this is a blog of a Porsche 356C (to be more precise a 1964 one), but this is much more than that. This is the blog to talk about a dream. Not only I've always dreamed of having one (not on the sense of owning a car, but more on the sense of being able to enjoy it driving it around) but also I've always dreamed about restoring one. Specially the part of restoring one appealed to me from day one: start from something that has lost its shine to make it look like the first day the car drove off the factory! Make the car reborn!! And this is what I hope this blog to be, to record the process of making a 1964 Porsche 356C reborn. And then make it evolve from there :)

Just curiosity, the blog is called "ruiva" which translates to "red-hair girl" to English. This is because I always dreamed of with a Red Porsche, so I've named it that way!

Keep posted for more! :)